The Manipulated
by Atom
Summary: A collection of non-related BtVS vignettes. Mostly centered around Buffy, Spike, and/or Dawn, though the occasional Scooby slips in. Stories rated PG13 or below, for now. WIP
1. The End of the World (Buffy)

  
THE END OF THE WORLD   
SERIES TITLE: The Manipulated   
AUTHOR: Atom (astroturf@poetic.com)   
CATEGORY: BtVS, General   
RATING: PG-13 (series)   
SPOILERS: S1-S6 of BtVS   
SUMMARY/NOTES: The Manipulated is what I'm calling my collection of non-related vignettes. The stories posted on ffn are BtVS, though when my site is up (hopefully this weekend) it will include other fandoms. Mostly, I write a lot of really short stories, and so I'm putting them together in a collection so they'll seem to have more value. ;) The Manipulated is a work in progress, with new vignettes being written daily. The artsy, avante garde version of these (complete with graphix!) will be available at my site when it's finished. None of these stories have been BETA'd; all mistakes are mine.   
FEEDBACK: Muchly appreciated: astroturf@poetic.com   
DISCLAIMER: In Joss' head there was a widdle Sunnydale, with a widdle lovesick vampire, and a widdle blonde girl with sticks -- in other words, he built the playground, I play in the sandbox. No infringement intended. 

-- -- --

THE END OF THE WORLD   
"It's 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday; it doesn't get much worse than this." Counting Crows, _Perfect Blue Buildings_

  


The sky is falling, collapsing upon itself with the weight of a million Hells. And the earth is on fire, set ablaze by the fiery sun and stars as they descend over her town -- over the playgrounds (the smell of burning rubber) and homes (the smell of burning beds) and cemeteries (the smell of burning bones) --

These fires, they nip at the tail of her skirt (chasing her, **showing **her) as she remembers:   
-- her sister's body crumpled at the foot of the stairs;   
-- her lover impaled on the stake of a white picket fence (the blood on her hands so red it's almost blue);   
-- the sharp, pink angles of her best friends' protruding bones;   
-- the static eyes of her only true father as his foot nudges her shoulder with every sway of the wind.

Somewhere she hears a child cry and she's tired, **so fucking tired **-- of fighting, of trying. She falls to the ground with the sound of flesh scraping asphalt and lets the fires consume her dying body, as they hungrily fight over feet and fingers, and she thinks: _It has to be better this way_. She doesn't scream -- doesn't **want **to -- just cries --

Until her eyes snap open and she is lying on the road to her house, the bright flames of the sun glaring down on her from a million light years away. When her eyes focus, she sees a boy on his bicycle -- sees his skinned knees and watches him lick his Fudgesicle with the uninterrupted ease of summer vacation. He gives her a funny look and asks: _Hey Lady, are you okay?_

She yawns and notices her hands are clean and says: _I think I might be._

__

I think it was just a dream.

He smiles an awkward smile before settling back onto the seat of his ten-speed and riding away. She rolls over onto her back, still a little dazed, and all she can see is the clear sky, and all she can think is:

__

Whoa. Deja vue.

Heaven was blue.


	2. Happiness is a Locked Box (Dawn)

**HAPPINESS IS A LOCKED BOX**

  


Sometimes, she can think of a hundred things that make her smile.

She sits at the small desk in her bedroom, pulls out the blue glitter gel pen from her backpack, and locates the writing prompt her English teacher gave her the first day of class under a dated issue of _Seventeen_.

Her teacher wants to know what happiness is. She's not sure she can answer that in five paragraphs. 'How did you spend your summer vacation?' is the alternative topic. She would have to lie. It doesn't matter -- the poet in her kind of has something to say about being happy.

Without very much thought she scrawls: Happiness is living in a house. She's thinking -- _of course _-- about a house being a Home.

Her sister turns off the light in the hallway. In the darkness her house feels empty. She lifts the pen to her mouth as she remembers: the couch Buffy doesn't like to sit on; lying gagged on the cold basement floor; Tara's body in the master bedroom.

She frowns a little and flips to a clean page in her notebook. She thinks about Janice's hot new boyfriend and decides that maybe Happiness is being with the person you love. She remembers Willow saying once that being with Tara made her feel beautiful. Then Tara died and the best part of Willow went with her. She remembers asking her sister about love--

__

Were you ever happy when you were...y'know, with him?   
Sometimes.   
Like when?   
When my eyes were closed --

but that only makes her think about Spike and how love destroyed him.

She decides love is too much like loneliness.

She sighs and then a different thought hits her: Happiness is friendship -- having friends who would die for you, who cannot live without you, who would... Pull you out of Heaven just so they wouldn't have to?

Outside her window she sees a streetlight flicker, then fade into nothing.

She decides Happiness must be a locked box -- a piece of one's self that can't be shared or explained. Maybe Happiness is just _being_. Perhaps Happiness is just a figment of the imagination -- perhaps, then, pain would be, too.

The poet in her has a headache.

She picks up her pen and begins writing: _How I Spent My Summer Vacation, by Dawn Summers._


	3. Living in a House (Spike, Buffy)

**LIVING IN A HOUSE**

  


You begin to walk through **the front door**. She stands inside, in the foyer. An impatient frown forms and beckons you in, though you aren't quite sure you can deal with this, not yet. _What is she thinking?_ you desperately need to know. But something happened after you left — maybe before that (might even be your fault) — and you can no longer read her like a book. So you get nothing; something inside of you laughs because It thinks that's what you deserve.

Imagine your surprise as you find there is no invisible wall to taunt you, not this time. So the voice inside — the soul that will remind you of what you are, despite everything — taunts instead, as It reminds you that a cancelled invitation requires magic, and magic in the hands of the wrong person is partly what got you both here in the first place.

Her frown disappears, however, so you follow her as she begins to walk up **the staircase**. Three steps behind her, you trail silently until you see her reach the top and, though you stop before you get there, she continues without so much as a glance over her shoulder. Slight hesitation blankets you and easily — _so easily _— manifests itself into guilt and grief. You peel your eyes away from the carpet and they are drawn, impulsively, to her hips as they sway, to her steady hands, to the curve of her neck. Your fists clench and unclench as you hurriedly catch up so you are standing right behind her, breathing down on her, aching to touch her — because, despite everything, you are what you are.

The hallway is longer and **the bathroom **is brighter than you remember. Maybe because she kicked you out of it with the heel of her foot; maybe not. It doesn't seem to really matter, though, because you watch her as you both pass it in unison and she doesn't even blink. You flinch, however, and fall a few steps behind as you freeze for a moment. In that millisecond you remember those two minutes of blurred confusion you spent smothering her, those thirty-four and a half weeks you spent under rocks and flickering bar-lights trying to forget. You flinched, and though you'll be thinking about it for days, she failed to even notice.

But the funny thing about immortality is how quickly the milliseconds pass, especially when part of you thinks she's leading you to your death. You tear your attention away from the aesthetically displeasing, angel-wing white room to find her disappearing behind the door of her bedroom. So you follow her and she closes the door behind you. 

You think about the times you've been in her bedroom — nothing comes to mind. All you can think about is how she's never invited you in before. Then you think about the times spent in _your _old bedroom, the literal hole in the ground that you called Home because you didn't know what a **home **was.

She kisses you and you think you might could get used to living in a house, again.


End file.
